One of the biggest problems for today's teenage society are high insurances
prices. The females under 21 and males under 25 are forced to pay higher rates
simpy because of their age and sex...or is this what the public has been led to
believe. Upon viewing the situation a little more in depth, we can come to a
slightly different conclusion.
    As you know, one of the biggest influences on a young teen's life is the
parent or guardian figure. The son or daughter looks to this person for guidence
and support in times of confusion and dismay. Now you may be asking how in the
world this relates to insurance costs. Well, if you look a little more carefully
at the situation, you will understand.
    Before a teenager learns to drive, he or she experiences countless hours of
watching the parent drive to school, to the market, to the mall, or any other
number of places. What the parent doesn't realize is that the young teen is
actually watching this behavior and taking it as a learning experience, like in
the aforementioned paragraph. This is especially true if the child watches from
a very early age, generally anything below 13 years of age. The child is being
conditioned, unbeknowest to the parent, in essance how to drive. It works the
same way with any other commonly seen traits: table manners, language, and
general ettiquitte. Think of a dog. If you are trying to train the dog to sit,
your repeatedly say "Sit" and maybe offer a treat. Eventually the dog will
understand that if he sits, he is going to get a treat. After much training, the
dog will eventually sit, even without being offerred anything. However, this can
gradually wear off if the dog discovers he is not being rewarded. The same goes
for humans. If you put 50 cents in a coke machine and don't recevied a coke, you
may put another quarter in the machine. If you still don't recevied a drink,
most people will simply leave and try another machine (possibly after some mad
thrashing and beating of the machine). However, very few teens will be exposed
to the driving for only a few years, then take a six month hiatus. This brings
up the point of this philosophy: higher insurance rates are due to those OVER
the age of 21 and 25, NOT because of the teenage drivers.
    Now, before you go and fall out of your chair (especially those who fall
into the aforementioned upper bracket), give me a chance to explain. I am not
saying that ALL parents are causing the rates. It is simply the majority. That
is simply the way insurance companies work. They base their prices, unfortunately,
on the majority, not the individual. If you watch the majority of drivers on the
road today, especially on a major highway or freeway, you will notice that most
are adult males over 25. This is where the insurance companies get the 25 year
old age limit for males and 21 age limit for females. In reality, it is simply
a method of punishing the younger generation for the older generation's driving
abilities (or maybe I should say inabilities). It is working they same way as
Social Security, but that is a different philosophy altogether.
    So why do the insurance companies charge the adults less if they are really
the cause of the problem? The solution is simply logistics. If the companies
charged the same, lower amount to all the drivers, regardless of age, they would
lose billions in revenues each year. If they charged the same, higher prices to
everyone, the public would be complaining about high prices. The older generation
would wonder why they are being charged the same rate as their children when they
have more driving experience. I use the term driving experience loosely here. A
better way of describing it would be "years of experience," since driving has
shown that more experience does not necessarily cause better driving. The adults
use the experience plea as a fallback, since they are the ones that are
influencing their "bad teenage drivers."
    Of course you may be asking yourself what the solution could be. That's just
it. There is no quick or easy fix for this. It would be like trying to reverse
the effects of us destroying the ozone layer. The insurance companies will never
comply, because this passes as an excuse for charging the higher prices. Since
most of the public is trained to this mindset, they do not view it as wrong. They
simply go along with the flow, doing their best not to cause any detrimental waves.